


brave or bored, either/or

by girljustdied



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2019-10-03 07:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17279744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girljustdied/pseuds/girljustdied
Summary: the sex doesn't mean anything.  everything else kind of does.





	brave or bored, either/or

**Author's Note:**

> takes place after “those of demon blood.”

“Tequila or rum?” she asks. A game of either/or. No right or wrong, only choices.

He taps his fingertips together, elbows on the bar between them. “What kind of night are we trying to have?”

“Just state your preference, Shadowhunter,” she replies, but then can’t just leave it at that when the corner of his mouth tugs up with affection— “And there’s no ‘we’ here. How many times are you going to make me say it?”

When his expression shifts into a smirk, there is a frayed edge of false bravado to it. “Oh, I don’t know. You seem to really enjoy letting me know where we stand. I’d hate to deprive you of any small pleasures.”

He still doesn’t understand that his phony bullshit is real enough to her. The surface is the action, and behind that action, intention. “And there you go again. ‘We.’”

He was the right person for a one night stand. Maybe not with her in particular, their history short but dense with blood and bruises and an all too easy understanding—but in general, in theory, Jace was a sure thing.

He responds to her original query in a heavy sigh, hands touching down to the bar inches from her own, “Tequila, please.”

“Wrong.” She shakes her head and turns to tend to other patrons. Tosses back over her shoulder, “So wrong.”

Doesn’t pay him any attention for the remainder of the night. Can sense his presence like the ghost of his palm on the nape of her neck, her skin prickling with the focus of his gaze. Can sense when he’s gone.

-

To him, trailing behind her in narrow, dim grocery store aisles two blocks from her apartment: “Apples or oranges?”

“Oranges.”

There is a suggestive tone to the answer that she does not fully register until later when he is peeling her clothes off, digging his fingertips into her flesh, and parting her lips. When he moves to kiss her with a chin wet with her juices, she can almost smell—

After, she holds an apple in her palm and carves thin slices from it, eating one at a time off the flat of her blade. The taste is clean, and sharp.

He watches her from the floor next to the bed they hadn’t quite made it to. Murmurs, “You’re good with that knife. It’s hot.”

She snorts and continues eating.

“If you ever want to give a seraph a whirl, I could—”

“Are you insane?” Her hands twitch into fists and the blade slips, cutting into her thumb. She growls at the pain and drops both the apple and knife into the sink with too much force. He’s up and in her space in an instant, dish rag in one hand. “Like I’d want to mess with a weapon literally forged to kill my people—” she shoves him away with a jerk of her hip but takes the towel.

“I didn’t mean—”

“I don’t care what you meant.”

Which leaves them in her cramped kitchen, him naked and her wounded, both pissed, chests heaving.

“Am I crazy,” he finally voices, “or is our whole vibe sort of weird now?”

The retort is easy: “It was always weird.”

“If you say so.”

-

Heartbeat thudding loud in her ears and pounding in the vein above her left eyelid, she calls out, “Jace, right or left?”

The trail was growing fainter every second.

“You can’t sense anything?” he pants.

Her patience is running thin, had been from the second a pack member had fallen through the doors of the Jade Wolf shaking from loss of blood and the aftereffects of vampire venom.

“You think I’d ask you to use your stupid runes if I knew where to go?”

The words are a snarl, but he takes it in stride.

All business, “We should split up.”

He breaks left until she reaches out and grips the sleeve of his jacket.

“No way am I letting you get the kill without me—”

He grasps her shoulder with his free hand. “I’m not—we’re not—the vampire will get a trial. After one of us catches him. Okay? You go right—”

She knows how she must look to him at this moment, at the precipice of a shift, eyes glowing bright green and muscles tense enough to snap. Like a monster, she thinks.

“Maia,” her name from his lips does little to calm her. “Maia, you know I’m right.”

“I don’t care.”

He hesitates to respond, studies the lines of her face for a charged moment like he’s looking for guidance. “You do care. And I’m trying—”

“You’re not listening to me.” Her bones crack with the change; it brings her to her knees.

“Okay,” he submits. “Okay.”

-

“It’s them or me, choose,” she doesn’t say. She doesn’t need him on her side in a fight. She doesn’t need him for anything.

-

“Would you rather…” they play in the early hours of the afternoon, lingering in bed. “Would you rather die young in a blaze of glory, or as an old man that no one remembers?”

He shifts, folding the arm closest to her behind his head.

“You pose that as if it’s a real question.”

She can either move to rest her cheek on the swell of his bicep or back away from the point of his elbow. A breath, and she chooses the latter.

His gaze slides from hers to stare up at the ceiling. “Do you ever imagine how the people in your life would react if you died?”

Too intimate. Teases, “You know, that sounds vaguely like a threat.”

“Look, are we doing this or what?”

“What?”

“Pillow talk.” His eyes flick back in her direction, then he moves again to lie on his side facing her, restless. “For it to work, it kind of needs to be free of the specter of violence.”

She grins crookedly. “I don’t know about that.”

His returning smile is tinged with frustration, like he might up and leave. It wouldn’t be the first time one of them had done so, but customarily it was her, thoughts blurred with motion by too much time spent in his presence.

“I mean, in a way I already know, I guess,” she hedges. “When I was turned, I ran from my life and never looked back. Is that a good enough response?”

He softens immediately, “Did your family come looking for you? Your friends?”

She tastes blood before she realizes she’d punctured the thin skin of her lip by worrying it with her teeth. “No.”

“Did you want them to?”

“No.”

Her tone is firm enough that he changes course. Reaching out to run the knuckle of his index finger over the curve of her hip, he tries to lighten the mood and fails spectacularly, “So I guess that means you picture dying an old biddy, peacefully in her sleep?”

“No,” the word growing passionate with repetition. “I’m amazed I’ve made it this far, to be honest.” When he frowns, she continues with a shake of her head, “You don’t—is it such a stretch to think that someone else would feel the same way?”

“I guess not.” His expression is too sincere, makes her breath flutter in her chest. “You know, I’d care, if you wanted.”

A forced huff of laughter, then, “Please don’t.”

“Happy not to,” he’s all teeth.

She twines her fingers with his, rests their hands on the mattress between them. After a long stretch of silence, she speaks up again, curious, “How about you?”

Dazed, “Hmm?”

“Damn, you can be slow sometimes.” Parrots back his phrasing: “‘Do you ever imagine how the people in your life would react if you died?’ Seems like the kind of question you ask when you’re actually the one who’s dying to talk about it.”

“My answer’s pretty much the same.”

“Care to elaborate?”

He swallows thickly, measuring his thoughts, “Well, I went through some stuff recently.”

The explanation would be comically vague if she hadn’t lived so much of it on a parallel track, the rest easily filled in by Downworlder gossip. “I know, I know, three last names in one summer—”

“Yeah,” the word clipped. “Feels like I closed my eyes for one second and everyone I cared about found, well—” he trails off.

She thinks about Clary and Simon. Alec and Magnus. Finishes his sentence: “Someone else.”

“Yeah.”

It would be so easy to bridge the space between them. To kiss his furrowed brow, his pout. To run her hands through his hair. “You thought the world would stop turning for you, pretty boy?”

“Not really,” he says, and means it.

“Blaze of glory it is, then.”

-

“Top or bottom?”

He laughs against her mouth, “Oh, do I have a choice now?”

“Sure.” She grips his hips and shoves him into a seated posture before straddling his lap. “You always do.”

He flips their positions with supernatural quickness; her startled intake of air sticks in her throat while a strangled shout tries to work its way out. Now she’s the one sat on a low crate in the supply closet of the Hunter’s Moon, her legs spread and Jace between them, his palms braced against the wood on both sides, looming over her.

“This work for you?” his voice rough.

He is waiting for her to tell him to stop. She is waiting to tell him to stop. Closes her eyes and lets herself feel the familiar heat of his exhales, focuses on the push and pull of his body as his breathing syncs with her own ragged gasps. The stinging scent of the hot wings he’d picked at to pass the time until she could take a quick break. Sweat, tequila, a strange charred smell she had come to associate with the runes burned into his flesh. She’d expected him squeaky clean that first time, but he never seemed to manage it fully.

His forehead touching down to hers, he murmurs, “Maia?”

“Are we doing this or not?”


End file.
